Always
by She's a Star
Summary: For years she had tried to ignore his voice, cold and malicious in the back of her mind. “I will always haunt you. I’ll never leave you. You’ll think I’m gone, but I won’t be.”


****

Always

__

by She's a Star

****

Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling. :)

****

Author's Note: This is incredibly strange.

~*~

She doesn't know why she hasn't noticed it until now.

He does not love her. He does not want her, or need her. All his desperate proclamations of love have been lies.

She knows that she's always been naive. A stupid, silly girl, a gullible girl who can be fooled and taken advantage of. Well, she won't have it anymore. She will escape him, she will outwit him. 

Her slender form trembles as she studies herself in the lake. Her reflection is perfect, flawless, intricate, and she wonders vaguely when she became so beautiful. Perhaps when the compliments spilled from his lips in between kisses, she had begun to believe them.

He'd told her she was beautiful, but is she really? Or is it just another lie, another plot, another scheme to destroy her?

She stares, entranced, at the figure in the cool, liquid looking-glass. Scarlet curls dance down her back, a waterfall of fiery crimson. Her brown eyes, liquid pools of chocolate, are cold and unfeeling...the eyes of a corpse. 

She knows that she is meant to be dead.

Shaking a bit, she uneasily sticks her toes into the water. Her reflection is instantly destroyed by the ripples that dance throughout the lake, and she stares blandly down at carefully painted crimson toenails. 

She remembers loving him, and wonders why she didn't see it before. _He_ had never truly existed, not the sweet boy that she thought she loved. Why, oh why hadn't she noticed before?

For years she had tried to ignore his voice, cold and malicious in the back of her mind. 

_"I will always haunt you. I'll never leave you. You'll think I'm gone, but I won't be."_

Everyone thought she was all right, when really she'd wasted away, a victim to _him_ and his cruel advances and whispered threats in the back of her mind. Oh yes, she ran through her day, smiling, laughing, murmuring idle 'I love you's to him so as not to let on that she knew.

He had almost fooled her, really. His kisses were so sweet and gentle, and when he said he loved her and he always would, it seemed so genuine. And his eyes...his eyes were what had thrown her off for so long. They were a brilliant, sparkling emerald, and for so long she'd believed that she could see his soul shining in those eyes.

But those weren't his real eyes.

She knows that now.

His real eyes are cold, dark, piercing.

He only wants to hurt her.

She is better off dead.

Dead, where she can't remember his kisses and his fingertips and his laugh and his smiles and the eyes that aren't really his. 

Dead, so she can't sway and enjoy his caress and his words and live in the blissful feigned ignorance of what he truly is.

Shivering, she steps out into the water. Her light, airy dress immediately grows heavy as it is soaked.

Soon, she will be free. 

Soon she will escape him.

Faintly, somewhere, she hears his voice calling her name.

But, she reminds herself, it is not really him. It is the man he pretends to be, the man who doesn't really love her.

The voice is really there, she knows, not a product of her tortured mind. His voice is never that sweet when inside her head.

Crystalline tears dance down her cheeks, miniature rivers of sorrow, as she wades out deeper. She tries not to think of the beautiful things she will be leaving behind. She can only think of her escape.

She will defy him.

And suddenly, he is behind her. She can feel his breath on her neck, feel his hands rest lightly on her hips. 

"Ginny, what are you doing? Why are you crying?" he asks, concerned. "Come inside."

She wants so badly to give into him. She loves him, or at least who he pretends to be. She loves him so desperately. 

But she knows the man she loves is a lie.

And his words, his true words, sparkling with malice, dance through her mind.

_"I will always haunt you...always, always, always..."_

They grow louder, more insistent, as his lips make their way softly down her neck.

_"Always, always, always..."_

She will stop him. 

"Ginny, what's wrong with you?" 

"Please go away," she whispers, blinking back tears.

"Gin-"

"_Go away!_" she shrieks, her voice echoing throughout the silent grounds.

He stops, stunned.

"Leave me alone!" she screams. "Get out of my head, stop haunting me, leave me alone!!! Don't try to make me love you! You want to torture me, you want to drive me mad!"

"Ginny, what the-"

"Well, I won't play along," she informs him, tone oddly cold and resigned. "I'm done. I'm leaving. I don't need you anymore, Tom."

All is quiet.

"Tom?" he repeats softly. "Ginny, I'm not-"

"Leave me."

"Ginny, it's me," he says sternly, firmly. He grabs her hands in his own and stares into her eyes. The intensity of his gaze sends shivers up and down her spine. "It's Harry. I love you. I don't want to torture you, I don't want to hurt you."

And with a sort of hopeless resignation, she gives him a weak smile. She knows now that she will never fly away, that she will always be trapped in his kisses and smiles, knowing all the while that he only wants to tear her apart.

He takes her hand and gently leads her back to the castle. She does not resist, does not try to fight.

She only walks alongside him, and tries to ignore the voice.

_"Always."_


End file.
